Do you think time travel is possible?

We're not talking inert to active, we're talking not alive to alive. Are viruses alive? Even inert to active does not necessarily happen like flipping a switch. It takes an entire textbook to explain this, but quick and dirty. Chemicals to chemical compounds to complex chemical compounds to complex chemical compounds that can replicate to complex chemical compounds that can replicate quickly to complex chemical compounds that can replicate quickly and combine with others to primitive DNA to viruses to single celled organisms...

All over millions of years, and I've left out thousands of steps. Where or when life began is a philosiphical question. Without time travel (remember time travel? :D ) it's impossible to say. Even with. I think it likely that life arose and was destroyed many times before chance hit on a combination that worked and was lucky enough to survive. Unless you want to accept a mythical explanation, it is simply not possible to point to a moment in time and say, "Here, life began right here."
 
chcr said:
We're not talking inert to active, we're talking not alive to alive. Are viruses alive? Even inert to active does not necessarily happen like flipping a switch. It takes an entire textbook to explain this, but quick and dirty. Chemicals to chemical compounds to complex chemical compounds to complex chemical compounds that can replicate to complex chemical compounds that can replicate quickly to complex chemical compounds that can replicate quickly and combine with others to primitive DNA to viruses to single celled organisms...

All over millions of years, and I've left out thousands of steps. Where or when life began is a philosiphical question. Without time travel (remember time travel? :D ) it's impossible to say. Even with. I think it likely that life arose and was destroyed many times before chance hit on a combination that worked and was lucky enough to survive. Unless you want to accept a mythical explanation, it is simply not possible to point to a moment in time and say, "Here, life began right here."
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I have never understood why science cannot agree as to weather or not a virus is a life form. Imo it's clear.
It reproduces, it evolves, it needs a host(a host that must be a life form). I don't think there's any question that a virus is a alive. I've heard all the arguements and i just don't agree with them.
I don't think 'the big question' is a philosiphical question at all. I think simply that the answers are so profound that as scientists we simply choose not to accept them. Not sure how much farther i want to carry this discussion though. I have the opportunity to engage in oral debates on this subject every once in awhile and those are grueling and long winded enough as it is. Text is simply not sufficiant for all these concepts. Back in my mass posting days i might have attempted it but nowadays i just don't have the patience.
If we go much farther i think i'll try and keep it simple. I gather you comprehend where i'm coming from? :D
 
Okay. I completely agree with the grueling and long-winded part BTW. This is an area in which we will never agree and that's okay. We don't have to, after all.
 
chcr said:
Okay. I completely agree with the grueling and long-winded part BTW. This is an area in which we will never agree and that's okay. We don't have to, after all.
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Now wait a second i didn't say that. Conform dammit! :la:
 
Well, it's been a long time since I posted a reply in this thread (near 3.5 years now), but it's time I set you all straight on this time travel question.

I thought it'd be cool to create a wormhole that would allow me to reach through and grab myself from behind. Then I could choke myself to death. Freaky cool, right?

But then I realized it would just be a whole lot easier to simply reach up with my hand and choke myself without the use of a wormhole.

But then it occured to me to create a wormhole that travels into the future. Then reach through and choke whatever person is there in the future. Once that person is dead, I'll stand by the wormhole and wait for my own hand to come through and choke me to death.

Now that's pretty cool, right? Then I realized I don't know the first thing about creating a worm hole.

So... ummmm, where was I going with this?
 
Ok so lets list the possibilities

First, It works you go back in time.
Now does what you effect change anything in your original future? Or is some sort of alternate future created allowing both to proceed?

Remember, that your trip thorough the past might have a cascading effect making your changes more and more evident with time (even the ones you didn't intend on creating). Simply by standing in line to get some food you might cause a war.

You might be asking how you standing in line in the past could start a war? You are standing in line for some food at some burger place before you complete your mission. This makes the line longer and a pregnant women in line a few people behind you. After getting through the line she is now running later than she would have had you not been waiting as long. In her hurry she doesn't see a cross walk sign and gets hit by a car. She lives but her unborn child dies. The child was going to be a key diplomat in avoiding a future war.

This is an extreme example but it shows a very real problem.

Lets consider something else… people have already gone back in time and made changes (or at least tried to make changes).

What events in history would they want to change?

The simple answer is you would never see those events because they never happened.

The problem with this is that the entire reason the person went back was to change the event so if it no longer exisits what reason did they have for going back? This creates a Mobius Time Loop paradox. Either way no change ever happened because nothing really ever changed.

Your best bet for time travel is to send an object back in time in a place that humans can’t reach until the future. For instance a coded message in a DNA sequence or in a known historical document using nano-technology or some undiscovered future technology.
 
I think that time travel is not possible, it the past, it already happened, done deal, the furture, well it hasn't happened yet so there is no-where to go.

if there ever is a time machine, maybe it will bring us back a past ECHO, where we cannot affect anything, in fact it will be more like watching a tv show.

Future time travel is impossible cause the future does not exist, there is no time stream, it is more of a wave, and we are at the front of it.
 
Paul, there's two scenarios you're missing out. The mobius loop, and the fabric of space itself.

The mobius loop requires that in travelling back or forward in time, you twist time/space into a loop. It's the twist in that loop that prevents paradoxes, and keeps anything you do in that time limitted to itself.

The other is simply dropping out of time/space and not coming back into it until the selected time arrives. It's simpler to simply freeze yourself and have your corpse revived in the future, but depending on the nature of the relationship between time and space, you might well be able to travel backwards too.
 
Professur said:
Paul, there's two scenarios you're missing out. The mobius loop, and the fabric of space itself.

The mobius loop requires that in travelling back or forward in time, you twist time/space into a loop. It's the twist in that loop that prevents paradoxes, and keeps anything you do in that time limitted to itself.

The other is simply dropping out of time/space and not coming back into it until the selected time arrives. It's simpler to simply freeze yourself and have your corpse revived in the future, but depending on the nature of the relationship between time and space, you might well be able to travel backwards too.
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if you drop out of space time you are not travelliong in time, just apcenting yourself from time.

and a mobius strip, that is taking science and math to near religious levels, i beleive it is a one way straight road, no loops no bends, maybe a few potholes.
 
paul_valaru said:
if you drop out of space time you are not travelliong in time, just apcenting yourself from time.

and a mobius strip, that is taking science and math to near religious levels, i beleive it is a one way straight road, no loops no bends, maybe a few potholes.
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I've already said that I don't consider them mutually exclusive.
 
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